As we welcome you into our newest naturescape exhibit, Whispers of Nature, we invite you to connect with the artists whose work captures the subtle beauty and quiet strength of the natural world.
In this blog, you'll hear directly from the artists as they reflect on their inspirations, creative processes, and the delicate ways nature finds its voice through their art. Each response offers a window into their world and a deeper understanding of the whispers that shaped their work.
Joanne LaMantia
1. What part of nature do you return to again and again?
Whether I’m walking through a city, forest or around the lake, I’m endlessly drawn to the majestic presence of trees and water. In the play of light and colour, I sense a quiet movement that captivates me. The bark of a tree transforms into a kaleidoscope of texture and hues and water holds my gaze with its ever-shifting rhythm and flow. Both elements continually inspire my work.
2. Do you think of your art as a kind of landscape?
My art is rooted in representational landscapes, but I like to weave in a touch of whimsy through unexpected colour choices or texture that breathe life into each scene. It invites the viewer to experience the familiar in a new way. I aim to strike a balance between the real and the imagined, encouraging a deeper connection with the landscape that inspires me.
3. How does time shape your pieces?
My art seeks to transcend time, capturing the endless beauty of the Canadian landscape - a beauty that deepens over time, less marked by nature's fury, and more defined by its incredible resilience. These moments feel suspended, neither in the past or future, but fully present.
Leah Olsen-Kent
1. What natural element or moment sparked this body of work?
I am deeply inspired by the gorgeous skies of Ontario, especially sunsets from Northern Ontario, where the colours just feel that much more intense against the silhouetted landscape. This body of work is born from that inspiration and those memories that are rooted within.
2. Do you create in silence, or do certain sounds guide your process?
I love painting outdoors. I spend my summers camping and painting in my outdoor studio, so I embrace and enjoy the sounds of nature, it fills me with endless inspiration. When I am not painting outdoors, I do often create in silence, letting the memories of the places I am painting take hold.
3. What does “quiet” in nature look like to you and how do you express it?
“Quiet” in nature are the calm moments experienced while taking in the inspiration, the sunsets, the silhouetted trees and the moments that sometimes go unnoticed by many.
Brenda LaRose
1. What does working with natural materials teach you?
The natural materials I work with in my art practice are the scenes that I use as my muse. Painting scenes from the lake teaches me patience, presence and gratitude. Nature doesn’t rush. It changes slowly and deliberately, which means I need to wait for the right opportunities for photos. I need to be present, observe closely and listen intently so that when I am interpreting the scene in my studio I can translate the feeling of that moment onto the canvas. I try to capture the full complexity of the scene with my paints and palette knives; the sunlight dancing spritely on the rippling water, the trees swaying in the breeze, or simply the layered silence of a calm morning sunrise. With each landscape I paint, my heart fills with gratitude that I can express myself in this way.
2. Which sense; touch, smell, sound; influences you most in nature?
Sound definitely influences me most (next to sight!). The quiet lapping of the water along the shore or against my kayak, the rustle of the wind through the pines and birches, and the distant call of the loon anchor me deeply into the moment. My early morning kayak trips on the lake are especially calming, because of the stillness and because the only sounds I hear are that of nature. These trips on the water are like meditation. That meditation stills my mind and grounds me in the beauty of the scenes I experience and interpret with each stroke of my palette knife.
3. What emotion sits quietly behind your latest piece?
Behind my latest piece is a quiet sense of longing. It isn’t sadness, but just a gentle ache for still moments that pass too quickly. It’s like the feeling you get after a perfect paddle, or at the end of a wonderful day by the lake, when the sun dips low and all feels right with the world. That sense of longing stays with me while I paint. The art I create is my way of holding onto that fleeting beauty and offering it back to the viewer.
Charina Koraksic
1. Which landscape or place is hidden in your work?
The hidden places in my work draw equally from the landscapes of Nova Scotia and Ontario. From the fog-veiled fields of my childhood in rural Nova Scotia to the quiet, rugged expanses of Northern Ontario, I’m drawn to moments where the natural world speaks in whispers—through mist, shifting skies, and subtle changes in light. These are not places I depict literally, but spaces I return to intuitively—where memory, emotion, and atmosphere blur together. Whether shaped by past experience or fleeting seasonal changes, these landscapes emerge as layered reflections of where I’ve been and how I’ve felt.
2. How do you translate emotion into natural form or texture?
Emotion flows into my work through the physical act of layering and smudging oil pastels—a process that is both intuitive and meditative. The materials respond to pressure, rhythm, and gesture, allowing feeling to shape form. There’s a quiet ritual in the way I blend tones and build texture, and this act of creation brings a deep sense of calm that I hope transfers to the viewer. Soft edges may speak of reflection or stillness, while more defined marks can hold tension or movement. The surface becomes a kind of emotional topography—one that invites others to pause and feel, too.
3. What kind of energy from nature are you trying to preserve?
I aim to preserve the quiet, often unnoticed energy of nature—the gentle resilience found in stillness, the hush before dusk, the pulse beneath a breeze. It's the kind of energy that whispers rather than shouts, that asks us to slow down and listen. My work seeks to hold space for this subtler vitality, to remind us that beauty and meaning are often found in the softest, most ephemeral moments.
Amy Oh
1. What role does fragility play in your art?
Fragility shows up a lot in my work. I'm drawn to how something can be soft and delicate but still have strength-like wildflowers growing through cracks in the sidewalk. That quiet kind of resilience really speaks to me, and I try to capture that feeling in my paintings.
2. Is there a single detail from nature that changed how you create?
Definitely. The way light filters through leaves. I remember sitting under a tree one day and just watching the light move. It felt so peaceful and full of life. Since then, I've been more focused on bringing that kind of calm, glowing energy into my work.
3. What do you notice in nature that most people overlook?
I tend to notice the quiet little things- like moss on a rock, the space between branches, or how the air moves when everything else is still. Those in-between moments often feel the most alive to me, and they're what I love to paint.
Jocelyn Williams
1. What movement in nature do you try to capture; wind, water, growth?
I'm interested in how people try to impose order and utility on the natural world, forcing nature back and creating constructions, and how nature tries to deal with this by filling back in, " healing" the barren spaces, nature is always trying to fill back in, and in urban spaces this can be especially chaotic, I do find myself attracted to different types of weather as well, as an expressive element in the compositions, I try to stay true to what I see.
2. Is your process more guided by memory or observation?
Probably more observation, but they are also defined by a childhood in a suburb that was transitioning from fairly rural to more urban. My play places were marginal spaces, hydro fields, construction sites, abandoned orchards. I've had a long-standing interest in the natural world and started gardening from a very young age, starting with the magic of seed growing and plant propagation and eventually grappling with the realty of our impact on the environment and concern with how our food is produced.
3. How do you hope people feel when they stand in front of your work?
Any way people want to react to my paintings is up to them and must be based on their own personal experiences. I have found people seeing different parts of the world reflected in areas mostly in Toronto and GTA, and people will see in them the things that interest them, architecture, history, signs and symbols of the urban world.
Jane Mikas
1. What patterns in nature inspire the shapes you create?
As a child, I often found myself creating linear spheres as a doodle when I was bored. One of my teachers said they were a primitive shape from the Celtic pre-Christian era. While on the phone, I would draw repeating lines row after row. I loved the meditative calm that I felt drawing these forms. I am currently painting the round shapes in nature, such as leaves, tree forms, round stones, etc. It gives me a comfy, cosy grounded feeling.
2. Does repetition in your work reflect something personal or organic?
I am consciously creating differences in my work. Linear lines alongside roundness in all its various forms keep things interesting. Leaf shapes and pod shapes are a recurring theme. I love the look of Birch trees with their light -coloured bark and all their spotted eyes. These forms represent my love for the organic and help me connect spiritually to nature.
3. What’s the softest thing about nature that you try to show?
The soft, subtle tertiary colours in nature inspire me to paint. Withered fallen leaves contrast with the grey softness of the cloudy skies. The white, hazy mist is probably the softest element in nature.
Paulina Colours
1. How do colour and nature speak to each other in your work?
I’m fascinated by the way light reflects off of water and all the subtle colours that appear the longer you stare into nature in its purest form. To me it is an act of worship to stare at nature and observe its beauty, the longer you stare the more you fall in love and the more colours you start to see and therefore appreciate deeply.
2. Is your art more about observing nature or feeling it?
By observing nature I feel it, the way it moves it can be calming or it can be intense and its rhythm can be chaotic or patterned either way it’s all perfectly divine. The order of chaos and its intensity can be invigorating feeling its power and even arousing the play between gentle and rough or cold and hot.
3. If this series had a season, which one would it be?
If this series had a season it would be a season of growth and blooming. Perhaps spring, of rising from the darkness into something new bursting from the earth reaching for the clouds and beaming with light.
Visit our Whispers of Nature exhibit from June 3rd to August 30th, 2025. Meet all the artists in person at our opening reception for the exhibit on June 19th from 6-9 pm.
